Outgoing President highlights landmark events during his term

Thursday, 23 January 2014 00:00 - - {{hitsCtrl.values.hits}}

While the country progressed, the national accounting body took giant strides to further build the profession in the country – to match up to its counterparts, or perhaps in some instances surpass the counterparts and establish Sri Lanka on the world map of accounting professionals. CA Sri Lanka Outgoing President Sujeewa Rajapakse in his speech noted that during his tenure as President in the last two years, the body witnessed numerous landmark events which have immensely contributed to the accounting profession as well as to the development of the country.

“The main highlight for the past two years were the ceremonial opening of our multi-storey building complex declared open by President Mahinda Rajapaksa in December 2011; and prior to that the convergence of IFRS in January 2012.” Phase II of CASL infrastructure development project is currently underway; he said adding that the corporate area is now complete. Under Phase II an auditorium of international level and state-of-art library will be constructed in the premises. The latter is expected to be completed by mid March this year. In 2012 CA Sri Lanka was the proud host of multitude of high calibre meetings of the likes of Confederation of Asian and Pacific Accountants (CAPA), South Asian Federation of Accountants (SAFA), and Asia-Oceanic Standard Setters Group (AOSSG), which strengthened the position of CA Sri Lanka as a local body with a global outlook. They also received a World Bank grant to strengthen the core technical activities of the institute. “Over the last two years the brand visibility of the institute has increased significantly,” Rajapakse acknowledged. “Today we are a super brand associated with a super profession.” CASL has taken every effort to propagate importance of their qualifications to most rural areas. Thanks to the efforts, 2013 recorded the highest number of student registration in its history with a total of 12,007 registering for globally recognised chartered accountants qualifications. He also spoke of the curriculum revision program carried out during his tenure, over and above the effort taken to offer a variety of services for the students including expediting the issuances of examination results. “We were also instrumental in bringing down world number one custom education provider, Duke CE last year to help Sri Lankan professionals to be on par with their global counterparts.” The body’s reciprocal arrangement with CPA Australia, one of world’s oldest and largest accounting bodies was yet another important milestone which we sealed in 2013; a similar arrangement will be concluded with ACCA one of these days, he added. “The institute did not disregard the needs of our accountants in the public sector. Having understood the significance role played by them, CASL established the Association of Public Sector Public Finance Accountants of Sri Lanka.” The body’s flagship event, the national conference and the annual reports awards competition continue to take pride of place with continuing popularity. In 2013 CA Sri Lanka also managed to record its highest bottom-line in its history. As President of the institute, he served and represented committees in key institutions such as SEC, contribute to the development through sub-committees, chairing two of ten special project committees. “In my induction ceremony two years ago I declared ‘nothing is impossible if we work together and no frontier is final,’ as the guardians of this institution and profession, CA Sri Lanka will continue its search for excellence,” Rajapakse said.